might be calling at the farm that afternoon. She wondered also— would it be wiser on the whole to give up the plan?

But the call would have to be paid. That little attention was, she felt, only due to one to whom—it was said—she owed her life. Since Mrs. Brutt wished to see the farm again, the present was as good a time as any other.

She hardly gave a second thought to aught so unimportant as the manners of Jane Morris. And somehow she failed to gauge the force of Mr. Stirling's injunction. It did not occur to her—perhaps because her mind was preoccupied with Doris and Hamilton—that he had definitely meant her not to go at all.

 CHAPTER X

A Surprise Visit

"WELL, I never!" ejaculated Jane Morris. "If that isn't a sell!"

She had donned her yellow silk blouse and a gorgeous hat, and was about to cycle to a gathering of Lynnbrooke cronies, when checked by a sudden downpour of rain. Till within the last twenty minutes the sun had shone, and nothing had been farther from her thoughts than weather.

In a trice the outer scene was transformed. Beneath a blackened sky trees bent low before the gale, and water poured in sheets. Miles of cycling under such conditions would reduce her to the drowned-rat stage.

She stood at the window in disgust.

"Plague take it! Always the way! Just the very afternoon when I was most set on going!"

"Why this afternoon?" asked Winnie. Each change in the atmosphere affected her fragile frame, and she was full of aches from head to foot. The soft eyes looked out from dark rings of pain; and a thick shawl could not keep her warm. The two were alone.

"Why? I like that! Anything to get away from this beastly hole. Nothing to do, and nobody to see! That's why."

"But why to-day particularly?"

"Oh, because—because there's a tea-party. You needn't tell mother. She only bothers."

"A tea-party where?"

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